A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny

by John R. Musick

The royalists in the days prior to the American Revolution, occupied a similar position that the monopolists, and wealthy do in politics to-day. They were the aristocrats, and for the common people to clamor for political freedom was absurd. The idea of republicanism was as loathsome to them and watched with as much jealousy as an important labor movement is to-day. The royalists called the men who clamored for civil and religious liberty fanatics, just as the monopolists of to-day, who control the dominant parties, call men who cry out against their oppression fanatics. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish the instinct of fanaticism from the soundest judgment, for fanaticism is sometimes the keenest sagacity. Those men wanted liberty and struggled and fought for it until it was obtained, just as the toiling millions of the world will some day sting the heel of grinding monopolies.

From 1660 to 1671, all New England was kept in a perpetual state of alarm and excitement. Plymouth made a firm stand for independence, although the weakest of the colonies. The commissioners threatened to assume control. It was the dawning strife of the new system against the old, of American politics against European politics, and yet those men struggling for liberty were called fanatics.

Secure in the support of a resolute minority, the Puritan commonwealth, in 1668, entered the province of Maine, and again established its authority by force of arms. Great tumults ensued; many persons, opposed to what seemed a usurpation, were punished for "irreverent speeches." Some even reproached the authorities of Massachusetts "as traitors and rebels against the king"; but the usurpers made good their ascendancy till Gorges recovered his claims by adjudication in England. From the southern limit of Massachusetts to the Quebec, the colonial government maintained its independent jurisdiction.

The defiance of Massachusetts was not punished as might have been expected. Clarendon's power was gone, and he was an exile. A board of trade, projected in 1668, never assumed the administration of colonial affairs, and had not vitality enough to last more than three or four years. Profligate libertines gained the confidence of the king's mistresses, and secured places in the royal cabinet. While Charles II. was dallying with women and robbing the theatres of actresses; while the licentious Buckingham, who had succeeded in displacing Clarendon, wasted the vigor of his mind and body by indulging in every sensual pleasure "which nature could desire or wit invent"; while Louis XIV. was increasing his influence by bribing the mistress of the chief of the king's cabal, England remained without a good government, and the colonies, despite bluster and threats, flourished in purity and peace. The English ministry dared not interfere with Massachusetts; it was right that the stern virtues of the ascetic republicans should intimidate the members of the profligate cabinet. The affairs of New England were often discussed; but the privy council was overawed by the moral dignity, which they could not comprehend.

Amid all the discord and threats, the New England colonies continued to advance in population, and their villages assumed the dignity of towns. It is difficult to form exact opinions as to the population of the several colonies in this early period of their history. The colonial accounts are incomplete, and those furnished by emissaries from England are grossly false. The best estimate that can be obtained gives to New England, in 1675, fifty-five thousand souls. Of these it is supposed that Plymouth contained not less than seven thousand, Connecticut, nearly fourteen thousand, Massachusetts proper, more than twenty-two thousand, and Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, each perhaps four thousand. The settlements were chiefly by agricultural communities, planted near the seaside, from New Haven to Pemaquid. The beaver trade, more than traffic in lumber and fish, had produced the village beyond the Piscataqua; yet in Maine, as in New Hampshire, there was "a great trade in deal boards."

A sincere attempt had been made to convert the natives and win them to the regular industry of civilized life. The ministers of the early emigration, fired with a zeal as pure as it was fervent, longed to redeem those "wrecks of humanity," by planting in their hearts the seeds of conscious virtue, and gathering them into permanent villages. No pains were spared to teach them to read and write, and in a short time a larger proportion of the Massachusetts Indians could do so, than the inhabitants of Russia fifty years ago. Some of them wrote and spoke English tolerably well. Foremost among these early missionaries, the morning star of missionary enterprise, was John Elliot, whose benevolence amounted to the inspiration of genius. He wrote an Indian grammar, and translated the whole of the Bible into the Massachusetts dialect. His actions, his thoughts, his desires, all wore the hue of disinterested love.

The frown was on the Indian's brow, however. Clouds were rising in the horizon. Since the Pequod war, there had been no great Indian uprising; but there was a general feeling of uneasiness which seemed to portend a general outbreak. The New Englanders were to feel the effects of it in all its fury. Neither Whalley nor Goffe had been seen since the day that Robert Stevens assisted the latter to make his escape.

The Indians, whose cupidity had been aroused by English gold, had searched the forest far and near for the regicides. Their knowledge of the forest and cunning in following a trail had two or three times brought them face to face with Cromwell's stern old battle-trained warriors. Then they had learned to their cost that they had roused a pair of lions in their lairs; but the regicides finally disappeared. They had last been seen near Hadley, and it was currently reported they were dead.

Rumors of an Indian outbreak were rife; still the good people of Hadley were living in comparative security. It was a quiet sabbath morn, and the drowsy hum of the bees made music on the air. The great meeting-house stood with its doors thrown wide open inviting worshippers. The sun, beaming from the cloudless sky upon the scene, seemed a benediction of peace. The whispering breeze on this delightful twelfth of June swept about the eaves of the church without a hint of danger.

The worshippers at the proper hour were seen thronging to the meeting-house, carrying their guns, swords or pistols with them. It seemed useless to go armed, when there was not a whisper of danger; but scarcely had the worship begun, when a terrible warwhoop broke the stillness. Immediately all was confusion. Children shrieked, some women trembled, and men, pale and stern, began to fire upon the savages, who, seven hundred strong, rushed on the place.